Life & Death March

The Christian’s Severe & Unsentimental Defense of Life

For more than three decades now, Americans opposed to the murder of unborn
infants have endeavored to jolt the public conscience by staging peaceful demonstrations
in various cities and towns across the country on January 22, the anniversary
of the Supreme Court’s decision in the case Roe v. Wade.

The largest of these demonstrations, the “Annual March for Life” in
the nation’s capital, normally gains considerable exposure on television
and in news publications. Given the immense cost required to stage these demonstrations—chiefly
in travel, accommodations, and sheer time and fatigue—the publicity thereby
garnered in the news media could hardly be called free, but the thousands of
ordinary citizens who gladly bear that expense continue to confer on our country
a blessing beyond reckoning. Touchstone is honored to recognize that
blessing and give thanks for those who confer it.

Ecumenical Strictures

Because ours is a journal ecumenical in structure, we are rarely apodictic
in our views of public matters. In general, we have endeavored to be more Socratic
than prophetic. Most of the subjects encompassed by our interest, after all,
are open to more than one legitimate approach.

For example, from time to time we have discussed theories of war and peace,
but we have refrained from taking a specific stand respecting any particular
war. Likewise, respecting the complex ethical questions associated with modern
medicine, we have tried to remain even-handed and, when conscientiously possible,
somewhat tentative in our conclusions.

But partly because we are an ecumenical journal, we try to discern what all “mere
Christians” can say together, especially what they must say together
in witness to a largely secular and sometimes anti-Christian society. The traditional
understanding of the gospel leaves the Christian conscience with a great deal
of practical latitude and personal discretion in matters of prudential politics
and public policy, and the different traditions we represent understand these
matters in sometimes markedly different ways.

With respect to abortion, however, the strictures imposed on the Christian
conscience are necessarily decisive and severe. There are no circumstances
that justify the deliberate, direct, intentional taking of an innocent human
life, including the life of the child still carried in the womb.

Indeed, Holy Scripture obliges us to address this question with absolute
clarity and, as charity permits, a certain measure of rhetorical force. Because
the accumulated wisdom of humanity testifies that the most elementary duty
of the state is to safeguard the lives of its unoffending citizens—and
because we believe the righteous judgment of God will lie heavy on the nation
that neglects to do so—we continue to exhort our fellow countrymen to
give heed to the clarion voice of conscience in this matter of abortion.

Although compelled by a fervent moral sentiment, we are not sentimental.
We are not guided by some vague “pro-life” preference. On the contrary,
we confess ourselves unimpressed by what is sometimes called a “consistent
pro-life” position, a sustained general thesis that piles all life-and-death
matters onto a single scale.

When we declare that “there are no circumstances that justify the deliberate,
direct, intentional taking of an innocent human life,” every single word
of that declaration we take to be essential, laying special stress on the adjective “innocent.” Our
opposition to abortion is not part of a universal “pro-life” preference.
We contend for a moral and political principle, the principle that affirms
the state’s duty to protect the lives of the innocent.

An Unhalting Witness

In fact, we believe that the clarity of this principle is sometimes compromised
by the insertion of the abortion question into a “consistent pro-life” agenda.
Such “consistency” is purchased at too high a price: the neglect
of logic and the loss of critical distinctions. (I put the word “consistency” in
quotes, because we doubt that true consistency can be achieved by the rejection
of crucial distinctions.)

We are not, for example, of one mind with respect to capital punishment.

When I wrote of my opposition to capital punishment a few years ago (in a
report on the execution of Timothy McVeigh), my argument was simply one view
among several that could claim theological or historical legitimacy. I argued
it as well as I could, but it was, in the end, only my view of the matter.
(Humble as always, I even refrained from mentioning that the pope agreed with
me.)

For this reason, we, even those of us opposed to capital punishment, have
scant sympathy for those who see some species of moral equivalence between
the intentional killing of an unborn child and the state’s exaction of
life from a convicted murderer or traitor.

With respect to abortion, however, we are convinced that there cannot exist,
among Christian minds, more than one legitimate position, either in moral theory
or in political application. Only rarely should a journal of ecumenical discussion
venture into the realm of prophecy and apocalyptic caution, but the matter
of abortion is such an instance.

For this reason the editors of Touchstone join our modest voice
to the ringing challenge that Elijah, nearly three thousand years ago, hurled
against his compatriots who were complicit in baby-killing Baalism: “How
long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal,
then follow him.”

We anticipate no unseemly “halting” in the anti-abortion marches
this year, and we ask our brothers who have halted between two opinions—for
there are believing Christians who have found reasons (by necessity bad ones)
to mute their voices here—to follow the Lord God. The brutal murder of
the most innocent and helpless among us, the unborn children, is not a point
on which we are permitted either compromise or silence.

— Patrick Henry Reardon, for the editors

Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of Christ in the Psalms, Christ in His Saints, and The Trial of Job (all from Conciliar Press). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.

Not a subscriber? Subscribe
to Touchstone today for full online access. Over 30 years of content!Options Below:

Touchstone is a Christian journal, conservative in doctrine and eclectic in content, with editors and readers from each of the three great divisions of Christendom—Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox.

The mission of the journal and its publisher, The Fellowship of St. James, is to provide a place where Christians of various backgrounds can speak with one another on the basis of shared belief in the fundamental doctrines of the faith as revealed in Holy Scripture and summarized in the ancient creeds of the Church.